In the leadup to May Day, the ISO is organizing meetings and helping build for demonstrations to defend the rights of immigrants, Muslims, and refugees, and help deepen ties of solidarity between of all those who are resisting Trump's reactionary agenda. Here’s an article by Socialist Worker journalist and ISO member Nicole Colson on the significance of May Day this year and what we can do in the weeks ahead to build for it .

YOU CAN say one thing for sure about Donald Trump: He's making America protest again—and again, and again.

The Women's Marches held the day after he took office were the largest single day of demonstrations in U.S. history. Thousands of people participated in a new form of protest—the airport occupation—in response to his Muslim ban. There are two major environmental justice mobilizations coming up in in April.

And now, with the Trump regime ramping up deportations and raids across the country, immigrant rights activists and organizations are joining with labor and other forces to turn this year's May Day into a show of solidarity and struggle against Trump's agenda.

The urgency of making a stand is clear after the White House shifted the deportation machine into high gear. Across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have been arresting immigrants on the thinnest of pretexts, without regard to how long they've lived in the U.S., the families that depend on them, or their ties to their communities.

On Monday, ICE agents raided a Chicago home with guns drawn and shot a man who they claim pointed a weapon at them. Everyone in the house had documents—and family members claim the injured father was unarmed and doesn't even own a gun.

ICE has specifically targeted immigrant rights activists and sanctuary cities with the aim of inflicting terror on whole communities and sending a warning to those who would attempt to stand up against the crackdown: Stay in the shadows—or else.

But while these raids and arrests are sparking fear among immigrants, they are stoking anger and a determination to fight back—which is driving interest in the calls for marches and protests on May Day.Read more

Wednesday, March 8 is International Women’s Day—and an important next step in building the resistance against Trump and the fight for women’s liberation. Below are some of the meetings, speakouts, rallies, and marches that the ISO will be participating in across the country. We encourage you to join us!

The March issue of Socialist Worker is out now and available from ISO branches around the country.

The front cover, with the headline “Donald Trump’s cruel war on immigrants,” highlights some the many stories of undocumented immigrants caught in the administration’s dragnet. Inside are several related stories, including, “A declaration of war on immigrants” and “Will Trump get his anti-Muslim ban?”

The back page features the struggle to defend abortion rights, with a roundup of reports about the Planned Parenthood counterprotests and an article on the lessons of...Read more

Elizabeth Schulte rounds up reports from around the country as supporters of reproductive rights made it clear they are ready to stand up to the right-wing assault. February 13, 2017

All over the country, thousands turned out at Planned Parenthood clinics to show their support for women's right to choose and to counter anti-abortion groups who called a February 11 day of action in support of the federal government defunding the women's health care provider.

Whether it was the huge crowd in Minnesota, where thousands gathered to face off against anti-abortion fanatics, or the counterprotesters in places you might not have guessed--the 200 people in Peoria, Illinois, the hundreds in Reno, Nevada, the dozens in Evansville, Indiana--the opposition to the anti-choice bigots on February 11 showed the huge support for a woman's right to choose around the country.

But not only that. The mobilizations showed people's willingness—eagerness, really—to take on the anti-abortion right.Read more

US politics in the past months has experienced, to quote the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, “an abrupt turn in the objective situation.”

Very few of us on the left expected that the next president of the United States would be a corrupt, narcissistic billionaire swindler, an open sexist and self-confessed serial abuser, and a man the Far Right hails for his open racism and nationalist xenophobia. Donald Trump successfully positioned himself as a right-wing populist, anti-establishment candidate who would tear up free trade, deport immigrant “job-stealers,” and restore good jobs for “real” Americans.Read more

Opponents of a woman‘s right to choose abortion are taking aim at funding for Planned Parenthood. Lichi D'Amelio makes the case that we can't let them go unchallenged.

February 7, 2017

Anti-abortion groups have called a nationwide day of protest at Planned Parenthood clinics on February 11 to support defunding the women‘s health care provider. They intend, according to their website, “to call on Congress and President Trump to strip Planned Parenthood of all federal funding and reallocate those funds to health centers that help disadvantaged women without destroying human life through abortion.”

It should go without saying that the bigots behind this mobilization, such as the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, care not one iota for women, “disadvantaged” or otherwise. They’re part of a long, right-wing tradition of harassing and shaming women entering clinics and imposing legal restrictions on abortion that make access to services increasingly non-existent for the majority of women in the U.S.

Thankfully, women around the country have instinctively responded by starting up Facebook pages encouraging people to counterprotest the bigots who will be showing up at Planned Parenthood clinics.Read more

The Reagan years were an era of intensified attacks on women's rights, but resistance built from the grassroots stood up to the anti-choicers, writes Elizabeth Schulte:

An anti-abortion Republican in the White House, the U.S. Supreme Court within one vote of overturning Roe v. Wade, and anti-choice zealots attacking women's clinics--in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the stakes were high for women's right to choose abortion.

And the battle was taking place in the streets of many U.S. cities, after hundreds of anti-abortion protesters descended on clinic facilities, determined to shut them down.

Randall Terry, leader of the extremist anti-choice organization Operation Rescue, claimed the crusade used the peaceful disobedience tactics of the civil rights movement in the interest of "saving unborn children."

But there was nothing "peaceful" or "civil" about their movement--or their goal of reversing women's right to abortion and making decisions about their own lives.Read more

The February issue of Socialist Worker is out now and available from ISO branches around the country.

The front cover features SW 's coverage of the anti-Trump resistance, beginning with "The Voices of a New Resistance" and "Trump Made America Protest Again," our coverage of the Inauguration Weekend upsurge of demonstrations.

The back page features more articles on the anti-Trump resistance, including “No Ban, No Wall! Let Them In!" and "The Uprising of the Airports," about Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim executive orders and the mass protest that...Read more

They came to Washington, D.C., by the hundreds and thousands packing trains, buses, vans, and cars.

They washed over streets and through parks as a torrent of humanity flooded into the National Mall to express their rage and sadness at the new presidency of Donald Trump—but also their joy at finding one another.

Similar scenes were repeated in cities and towns across the U.S., making January 21, 2017, the largest day of protest in American history—over 3.3 million people and counting, according to an Internet attempt to gather information on all of the protests.

And there were hundreds of thousands more marching around the globe, all seven continents, even Antarctica—from Berlin to Buenos Aires to Bangkok, from London to Lisbon, and from Rome to Rabat.

After a presidential campaign that put the question of sexual assault front and center, one that most people figured would end with the inauguration of the first woman president, it was President Donald Trump who took the oath of office on January 20, to the dread and revulsion of many millions of people.

So it was only appropriate that millions upon millions of people raised their voices in a collective cry of outrage at the inauguration of a brutish, boastful sexual predator as commander in chief.Read more